by Murph Krajewski | Jun 2, 2022 | Business Texting
For a while now, it’s been clear that texting isn’t just another way to connect with old friends and family. Texting has also become the preferred channel for customers to reach businesses and vice versa. Primarily, businesses and customers alike are seeing how reliable texting is for efficient and effective communication. As many as 60% of customers read texts within 1-5 minutes after receiving them. And the average SMS open rate is 5x higher than your typical business email. Customers are eager to reach you and hear from you via text.
In a world where communication remains a crucial part of any business’ strategy, texting can be an effective way to build business, improve consumer-to-business relationships, and enhance your brand. But it can be tricky to know what works in business text messaging. We need examples.
As the youngest in my family with three older siblings, I spent a majority of my life looking to my older family members as examples: What’s cool to wear? What music should I like? What should I not do to avoid getting in trouble with mom and dad? We naturally look for examples to understand how to grow and thrive. The same goes for our businesses. We look to good examples for how to grow and thrive with our customers.
So we’ve gathered a list of some of the companies who are leading by example. These are some of the best business text message examples out there. Ready to get inspired?
4 Companies Who are Leading by Example
Suntrup Automotive Group has been servicing and selling cars in the St. Louis area since 1957. As a reflection of their amazing customer service, Suntrup was honored with the Women’s Choice Award for being one of America’s Best Car Dealerships for customer service and continues to strive for excellence in every aspect of their business. One way Suntrup maintains excellence is by opening communications between their service team and their customers with business texting.
To streamline communication at their dealership, Suntrup uses business texting to keep customers in the loop. Here’s how:
When a car gets serviced and is ready for pick up, the service advisor sends a text out from their computer to the customer notifying them that their car is ready or asking for approvals. The customer then has an easy way to chat back and forth with the service advisor — able to ask questions, give approval for work, or schedule a pick up. There’s no need to play phone tag or get bogged down with emails. With online texting, Suntrup can shave off over 40 hours of work every month, cut back on interruptions, and build customer trust.
Business Text Message Examples #2: Delta Air Lines
I love to travel, but the process of flying stresses me out. I know I’m not alone in this. Every time we prepare to get on an airplane, there’s a lot to keep track of: security lines, boarding passes, baggage claim ticket, boarding time. I’m getting stressed just thinking about it. So as soon as I book a flight, I’m quick to download the app of whichever airline I’m on so I can check-in as soon as possible, look up my boarding time, check my gate, etc. Delta, though, relieves stress and helps me to be a step ahead in how they use business text messaging.
Delta Air Lines continues to earn accolades from customers for its outstanding customer service in the U.S. and around the world, frequently dubbed the best overall customer service airline. One way they stand out is through meeting their customers on the go. Here’s how they do so:
Delta keeps customers up to speed with any changes during the customers’ journey. When you sign up for texting from Delta, any time a flight change or gate change occurs, you’ll get a text from Delta with all the info you need immediately, no matter where you are. Customers can avoid showing up to the airport to find their flight delayed. Instead, they’ll know as soon as the airline makes the call, saving customers stress and time.
Delta also made another industry-leading move with business texting. To connect with customers in their channel of choice, Delta integrated messaging in their app with Apple messaging, letting customers connect with a live Delta representative to get in-the-moment assistance. Instead of sitting on hold for two hours after a flight gets canceled, customers can text a Delta rep using the phone in their back pocket.
Ginger Bay is dedicated to providing the best salon and spa experiences for men and women. In fact, they are so good at it that they’ve been named a Top 200 Salon & Spa in the nation from Salon Today Magazine for 21 years.
With no change to your existing phone service, Ginger Bay implemented business texting to stay in contact with scheduled clients, send alert notifications, and send out call-to-action marketing:
Ginger Bay uses texting to communicate with customers. But aside from just using it to schedule and manage customer appointments, Ginger Bay drives customer engagement as well. Using Textel, Ginger Bay sends texts to customers to offer promotions, keeping customers loyal and interested. To do so, they release a keyword for their guests to text their salon phone number by a certain time to receive seasonal gift card promotions, bonus points related to a loyalty program, or discounts on products. During one promotion cycle, they received over 300 texts in 45 minutes! With this example, we see how one business text message keeps customers coming back to your brand over and over.
Business Text Message Examples #4: Warby Parker
I have horrible eyesight. And for years, I’ve gone from one pair of glasses to the next, trying to find the right pair that I will actually want to wear. But then I tried Warby Parker. Warby Parker makes buying glasses easy — offering Home Try-On so customers can give five pairs of glasses a trial run before committing. Warby Parker has also made it their mission to offer a cohesive omnichannel experience, adopting business text messaging as a customer service tool. Here’s how they use texting to assist their customers:
Glasses are an expensive online purchase with a lot of details involved: health insurance, prescriptions, returns, exchanges. Making that kind of purchase online means customers need access to help at nearly any time of the day, and quickly during their purchase. Warby Parker has made it incredibly easy to get help, offering live chat, email, phone, self-service, and text support. When you need someone to answer a question, customers can just click on the “text” icon on their website and open a text thread within their phone or laptop’s messaging app.
The brand also has some fun with their SMS support. Back in 2017, Warby Parker invited customers to text their “Costume Council” to get ideas for what to wear for Halloween that year. In using text message support in this way, Warby Parker inspired interest in their brand and kept current customers engaged.
This post originally published on June 29, 2018 and was refreshed and republished on June 2, 2022.
by Murph Krajewski | May 24, 2022 | News
ST. LOUIS, May 24, 2022 – Textel, the full-service, cloud-based texting platform for businesses and contact centers, announced a new partnership with RingCentral. Together with RingCentral, a leading provider of global enterprise cloud communications, video meetings, collaboration and contact center solutions, they’ll bring full SMS and MMS capabilities to their customers. And in doing so, they’ll enable human conversations in a familiar, flexible channel customers want to interact on.
Built seamlessly into the RingCentral Contact Center, Textel’s integration lets users have a flexible, two-way dialog with their customers via SMS and MMS from their existing business number and DIDs. Centers can reduce average hold time and improve customer satisfaction ratings with features like skills-based routing, agent-initiated and mass outbound texting, agentless textbots, Interactive Text Response (ITR) call deflection and group texting. And, with full transcript reporting and analytics, managers have the tools they need to coach agents.
“We’re excited to work with RingCentral and bring the benefits of our offering to RingCentral customers through our integration,” said James Diel, CEO at Textel. “As part of the integration, which adds two-way conversational SMS and MMS capabilities as well as one-to-one and mass texting functionality, businesses can experience improved customer service while reducing call volumes and operational costs.”
Textel also integrates with RingCentral’s Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS) platform enabling businesses to use SMS and MMS for mobile lead generation, website conversion to chat, booking appointments and reminders, promotions, and cross-department communications via the RingCentral unified app available on desktop, web, and mobile.
“Providing customers with a reliable, secure, and scalable business communications solution is core to our cloud communications platform,” said David Lee, vice president, product management at RingCentral. “The integration of Textel with RingCentral gives customers a platform that’s both easy to use and opens up an entirely new channel of interaction through SMS and MMS texting.”
About Textel
Founded in 2014, Textel is the rapidly growing texting platform for businesses and contact centers that is specifically designed to improve the customer experience, increase customer engagement, improve contact center performance, and drive revenue. With over 1,000 customers across North America, Textel is the texting platform for contact centers that want to communicate faster and more efficiently than traditional channels (email, voice, chat). Visit Textel on LinkedIn and Twitter.
by Murph Krajewski | May 5, 2022 | News
ST. LOUIS, May 5, 2022 – Textel, the full-service, cloud-based texting platform for business and contact centers, experienced explosive growth in 2021, with both revenue and bookings up by more than 70% year-over-year. This growth was fueled by a 57% increase in new customers, as the company’s advanced texting platform saw accelerated pull-through from its expanding CCaaS partnership base. And, Textel reported a 114% net retention rate for the year, demonstrating the value of the platform and its customers’ add-on usage.
“Textel is in the middle of significant acceleration, and we are excited to be connected to more partners, platforms, and customers than ever before,” said Textel Founder and CEO James Diel.
Today, 97% of people reject or ignore phone calls from traditional outbound dialers, while 95% of texts are read within three minutes of being sent. And texts have a higher response rate than voice and email combined.
Research also finds today’s consumers want the convenience, flexibility, speed, and personal service of texting. As many as 91% of people say they would opt-in for text messages from brands, and 75% are open to receiving offers via SMS.
Reaching people where they want to be reached, Textel is changing how contact centers do business. One customer, Sono Bello, the cosmetic surgery specialists with 60+ locations across the country, struggled with low open, click-throughs, and contact rates. Their no-show numbers were unacceptably high. But by implementing Textel, appointment rates increased by 9%, leading to 500 more “shows” a month and a $1.5M increase in monthly incremental revenue. And they are now generating an additional $250K in incremental revenue per month with Textel-enabled re-engagement campaigns sent directly from their CRM.
And when Pearson, the world’s leading learning company, with 20,000 employees that deliver their educational products and services to students in nearly 200 countries, found their voice-based outreach no longer met their students’ needs, they deployed Textel. Overnight, their contact rate improved by 200%, with a 2X increase from a request for information to the enrollment process. Labor costs were reduced and both students and employees have reported positive sentiment around the experience.
“At Textel, we get excited when we hear about the success of our partners,” continued Diel. “Textel was founded to make it easy and seamless for businesses to adopt texting. But another beneficiary of our services is the people who are no longer tied to their phones on hold waiting to speak to a customer services rep or their computers waiting for a response in a webchat. Our texting solutions bring flexibility to the customer experience, creating refreshing interactions and driving real business ROI.”
Founded in 2014, Textel is the rapidly growing texting platform for businesses and contact centers that is specifically designed to enhance the customer experience, increase customer engagement, improve contact center performance, and drive revenue. With over 1,600 customers around the world, Textel helps companies communicate faster and more efficiently than traditional channels (email, voice, chat). Visit Textel on LinkedIn and Twitter.
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Kelly Keane
[email protected]
by Murph Krajewski | May 2, 2022 | News
ST. LOUIS, May 2, 2022 – Textel, the full-service, cloud-based texting platform for business and contact centers, was awarded NICE’s (Nasdaq: NICE) DEVone Application Certification. The distinction assures NICE CXone customers that Textel’s innovative cloud texting and multimedia messaging service (MMS) is a trusted solution that meets specific quality, performance, and security requirements upon technical integration.
By replacing the need for phone calls, Textel’s advanced texting platform lets users increase revenue while dramatically reducing operational costs. Built seamlessly into NICE’s CXone platform, the multi-directional texting solution provides full SMS and MMS capability on existing long-code and short-code numbers, letting customers communicate faster and more efficiently than on traditional channels (email, voice, chat). With features like skills-based routing, agent-initiated and blast outbound capabilities, agentless textbots, Interactive Text Response (ITR), call deflection, and group texting functionality, agents can now oversee multiple interactions simultaneously. And, with full transcript reporting and analytics, managers have the tools they need to coach agents.
NICE’s CXone platform takes a holistic approach to improving both agent and customer experiences, helping organizations of all sizes modernize and remain agile and resilient in today’s increasingly digital landscape with omnichannel routing, analytics, workforce optimization, automation, and artificial intelligence.
“NICE has been a key partner of ours for several years now, and together we have brought the power of texting to major brands around the world,” said Textel Founder and CEO James Diel. “Receiving the DEVone certification is both an honor and a testament to the success of our relationship. We’re excited to continue to grow with NICE and help businesses adopt texting so we can all hang up the phone and get a little more time back in our busy lives.”
“The NICE CXone DEVone ecosystem creates opportunities for innovation and extends the power of the NICE CXone portfolio by providing a simple path to trusted applications and technology,” said Paul Jarman, NICE CXone CEO. “We’re pleased to present Textel with the DEVone Application Certification, reiterating our belief in the value their solutions can bring to NICE customers.”
About Textel
Founded in 2014, Textel is the rapidly growing texting platform for businesses and contact centers that is specifically designed to enhance the customer experience, increase customer engagement, improve contact center performance, and drive revenue. With over 1,000 customers around the world, Textel is the texting platform for contact centers that want to communicate faster and more efficiently than traditional channels (email, voice, chat). Visit Textel on LinkedIn and Twitter.
About NICE
With NICE (Nasdaq: NICE), it’s never been easier for organizations of all sizes around the globe to create extraordinary customer experiences while meeting key business metrics. Featuring the world’s #1 cloud-native customer experience platform, CXone, NICE is a worldwide leader in AI-powered self-service and agent-assisted CX software for the contact center – and beyond. Over 25,000 organizations in more than 150 countries, including over 85 of the Fortune 100 companies, partner with NICE to transform – and elevate – every customer interaction. www.nice.com
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Contact:
Kelly Keane
[email protected]
410-271-7450
by Murph Krajewski | Aug 3, 2021 | Business Texting, Customer Experience
When businesses think of delivering excellent customer service, accessibility needs to be at the top of that list. Accessibility can mean many things, but we’re looking at creating greater accessibility for individuals with disabilities in this blog.
In our on-demand economy, it’s never been easier for customers to jump from one company to the next. Almost half of all customers have done it due to poor customer service. When it comes to customers with disabilities, companies are losing about $6.9 billion a year simply because their websites aren’t accessible.
Texting is a quick and easy way to provide better accessibility. Texting creates convenient briges of communication that other forms of communication like voice and chat tools lack. Here are a few reasons why and how you should adopt texting:
Greater Accessibility Than Phone Calls
A phone call can be a non-starter for the deaf, hard of hearing, or those with speech disabilities. Teletypewriters (TTY) and Telecommunications Relay Services (TRS) can help bridge the communication gap by translating speech to text and vice versa, but they come with limitations.
For one, when a customer uses TTY mode on their mobile phone, it might prevent other phone functions from operating, which means a customer may not get an important call or message. Agents may think a TRS call is a telemarketer because they hear “Hello. This is the relay service…”, not realizing it’s a TRS provider relaying information for someone with a disability. Lastly, you’re pushing customers to call you, which drives up call volumes – something you are likely trying to reduce.
Texting creates better accessibility for the Deaf, hard of hearing, and those with speech disabilities, because:
- There’s no other technology or services required on the customer’s end besides their phone.
- The entire conversation is made through text.
- Agents can answer multiple texts at once for shorter wait times.
Greater Accessbility Than Webchat
We’ve talked about the pros and cons of webchat vs. text elsewhere, but not for accessibility. Webchat can be a great resource, but it depends on whether your website is easy for those with disabilities to navigate. Webchat also doesn’t help the nearly 25% of disabled respondents who say they never go online. Part of the reason behind this is that those with disabilities are typically seniors who tend to be on the lower end of digital adoption.
The good news is texting creates greater customer engagement even among older populations. And although older customers aren’t sending anywhere near the volume of texts as younger customers, they are more likely to respond to texts if they do receive them.
Greater Accessibility for Everyone
Texting is the most popular form of communication today. By including texting in your omnichannel contact center strategy, you’re giving every customer a convenient way to communicate with your business. Fortunately, adding another channel for support doesn’t mean more work for your agents. In fact, it can reduce your overall inbound support volume. Here’s how:
Use Text IVRs
Text IVRs operate the same way as your usual IVR, except they’re done entirely through text messages. Best of all, customers can see their text history, which reduces repeat calls if they forget anything.
Use Textbots
Textbots act a lot like chatbots. You can set up textbots to do proactive outreach. For instance, Pearson Education implemented Textel’s textbot to reach out to interested students to qualify them before connecting them to an advisor. Their call attempts dropped by over 90%, but they saw their contact rate increase 225%!
Push Calls to Text
Although pushing calls to text doesn’t necessarily reduce your calls volumes, it can reduce your average hold times. That’s because agents can manage multiple text messages simultaneously. Plus, they can send and receive images, documents, and more to communicate faster.
When you receive an incoming call, give them the option to text instead. You can do this easily with your IVR. Follow these steps:
- Give the option to text (e.g., “To text with us instead, press 2.”).
- Have the IVR confirm the number your agent should text (e.g., “I see you’re calling from 8015551234. Press 1 if we should text that number. Press 2 to enter a different number.”)
- Have the IVR end the call.
- Send an automated text message that an agent will text them soon.
Pushing calls to text can decrease calls if you’re tackling common issues in your automated text. For example, the State of Michigan was getting overwhelmed with calls due to COVID. They found that many of the calls were asking questions they already tackled on their website. Using Textel, they chose to callers the option to receive a text that included a link to the FAQs on their website. In the first three weeks of implementing Textel, they deflected over 800,000 calls!
Greater Accessibility with Textel
There’s no magic communication channel that satisfies all your customer needs. Each plays a critical role in providing accessibility. Texting adds unparalleled convenience to your customer interactions and more efficiency for your agents. Textel’s texting platform for contact centers gives you everything you need to connect to users on the devices they’re already using and through the way they’re already communicating.
